The DRINKS Podcast: The Business of Online Alcohol
Your definitive source for digital transformation in the alcohol industry.
Hosted by Rami Jubran, Chief of Staff at DRINKS, this series explores how technology is reshaping alcohol commerce.
The alcohol business is at an inflection point. The way people discover brands, how they research what to buy, where they actually make purchases, it's all shifting. And honestly, a lot of traditional approaches just aren't working the way they used to.
Every week, we’ll talk with founders, operators, and executives who are figuring this out in real time. Some are finding real success with new strategies, others are learning expensive lessons, but they're all navigating the same fundamental challenge: how do you build a sustainable alcohol business in a digital world?
Whether you're running a winery exploring eCommerce, looking to add alcohol as a new category at a retailer, or building technology for regulated industries, these conversations give you the context you need to understand where this industry is heading.
The DRINKS Podcast: The Business of Online Alcohol
Exploring the Journey of Wine: Insights from Joe Megabow of Bright Cellars - 003
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Let’s explore the journey of a wine bottle - from a vineyard to your table. Joe Megibow, the mastermind behind Bright Cellars, shows us the way. Raised in the company of wine, Joe sought to disrupt the exclusivity of the industry and make it accessible to the younger generation. His data-driven approach analyzes customer preferences, from their favorite type of coffee to sweets, and curates wines that match these tastes.
The wine industry has its fair share of challenges, but Joe believes they're nothing but opportunities waiting to be seized. With the advent of the internet, it has become more important than ever for wineries to bridge the gap between themselves and consumers. Joe shares his experience with Shopify, emphasizing that outsourcing certain tasks can only reach a certain level of efficacy - having the expertise in-house is key to achieving remarkable success.
Looking ahead, Joe predicts a wave of new trends sweeping the industry. From customer-centric approaches to novel products and packaging, he sees a “bright future,” especially for low alcohol or zero-proof products. He stresses the importance of keeping pace with evolving customer needs and the need for authenticity in everything we do. With Joe's insights, get ready to explore the fascinating world of wines from an entirely new perspective!
So grab your glass and join us!
Revolutionizing the Wine Industry
Speaker 1Hey everyone , thank you for listening to the drinkscom podcast the business of online alcohol . I'm your host , brandon Amoroso , and today I'm talking with Joe Megabow , the CEO of Bright Sellers , one of the industry leading DTC wine companies in the space and also a drink set user , absolutely .
Speaker 2Sure to both . Hi , Brad , and thanks so much for having me on the show .
Speaker 1So before we dive into some of the topics I know we want to cover today and you just give everybody listening a quick background about yourself- Sure happy to .
Speaker 2As Brandon said , I'm a CEO of Bright Sellers , an interesting startup wine club . We can I'm sure we'll talk about that a bit more momentarily . I've been here just shy of a year and full transparency . I'm new to the adult beverage category . I've been learning as fast as I can . Prior to that , I was CEO of a mattress company called Purple for about three and a half years . I've been in consumer and retail for many , many years , especially the e-commerce side . I was American Eagle Outfitters before that and prior to that spent six years at Expedia where I ran the US business , the Expediacom business , and I also sit on a couple boards . I just exited a board of Red Line Hotel Corporation and I'm also on the board of Lambs Plus , the largest specialty retailer in home lighting .
Speaker 1So how did your impressive background lead you to Bright Sellers and the wine industry ?
Speaker 2Well , thank you . I think it comes more just with age . I'm in my mid-50s , so it gives you enough runway to actually connect a few dots here and there . This is a startup and more recently I've been with a bit larger companies , but it was a passion of mine .
Speaker 2When I grew up , I spent my first four years overseas . My father was in the military and we were stationed in Europe and when we came back my family brought back with them many European sensibilities , one of which was wine wasn't taboo at age or in occasion . It was just always there and it was always part of dinner . And growing up that was what I had . It was you had the salt and pepper shaker on the table and you had a bottle of wine on the table . It was just part of the meal . And I found as I got older I somehow lost that .
Speaker 2And when I started looking around , especially at the younger generations coming up , there's plenty of alcohol out there , but wine seemed to be aging up with the population and becoming more exclusive , more of an affluent product , and you see it in the numbers as well . I mean unit volume is down , average price is up . It's become more selective , more exclusive , and it was off-putting to me and it's certainly off-putting to the younger generation . I mean , you go to a really nice restaurant and there's maybe a dozen entrees on the table . That still takes a bit of thought to figure out what you want . And then the wine list comes over and there's potentially 150 or 200 choices where no disrespect , but someone with a PhD and a pretentious tin cup has to come over and navigate you through . Otherwise you end up just buying the second least expensive cab on the list and call it a day .
Speaker 2And it just bugged me that I'd sort of fallen out of line . And it bugged me seeing that this was not just me . It seems to be even much of a new generation . So yeah , I was friends with some folks connected with one of the venture capital firms and I heard about this . And from the very first time I heard about this business , which had been around multiple years already but was in need of some new leadership it just had me hooked .
Speaker 2And not only is this a business that's trying to get back to what wine is all about , which is joy and it's something to be enjoyed in getting rid of the pretension and the affect , but it was a really cool model as well , in that the idea was , what if we could help solve the cold start problem of you know where do we even begin with someone and ask them a bunch of questions that require no , not wine knowledge whatsoever Just how do you take your coffee or tea , or what kind of sweets do you prefer ? You know dark chocolates or gummy bears , or you know just different taste questions that everyone knows and from that be able to deconstruct their preference for bitterness and sweetness and acidity and astringency and these kinds of things and get them started in a very predictable way , because we make all our own wine as well and we know our wine , and that matches something we can do very effectively . But then the really exciting part happens , which is we then get feedback , and we've got now millions of points of feedback from our consumers where , as they rate the wines , it goes into a machine learning model where we're then able to get smarter and smarter to predict wines they may not even know they would like . I don't like Chardonnays . Well , it turns out , you think you don't . What you don't like are oaky , buttery Chardonnays , but here's something totally different that we think you might actually enjoy , and we've got a really strong data affinity model around other people like you and their taste and your taste , where we can pull that together and it gets smarter and smarter .
Speaker 2The final hook , which really I think is where it , you know , makes the as a business really interesting , is that then feeds our production model . So we've got all of these consumer taste profiles , we've got all this data of what's really resonating with our consumers and that directly informs what we then produce . And because we're not on the farming side , you know we'll buy the raw juice from all over the world . We're able to then identify , produce and finish wines from all over the world with all sorts of taste profiles that exactly match what our customers like and that closed loop feedback system centered around customer at their core , really recognizing there's no wrong way to drink wine and each customer has their own taste . It just , you know that was back to my roots , where it was just wine , was just something to be enjoyed and everything else around it just seemed to be getting in the way .
Speaker 1And I think the whole model just makes wine so much more accessible as well to the average consumer . And I see it all the time with my friends my age nobody really drinks wine and it's all like seltzers or you know some random RTD that tastes awful and I can't stand it , but they're all like the happy dad or whatever it may be . But I think it's really important to be able to come into the industry as outsiders , to be able to connect better with this younger generation that's coming up , because there's so many other alternatives , whether it's RTDs or different product categories , and you need to be able to sort of connect with them in a different way .
Speaker 2That's right , and part of that , you know , while you know , while there's a underbelly of education we're doing , the goal here isn't to give our customers that PhD . The goal here is just help them understand in their terms what they like , and some of that meant throwing a lot of convention to the wind . I mean , we've got some fun little sayings on our site that really help keep our North Star . You know , things like if it holds wine , it's a wine glass . Yeah , I mean , who says that certain wines can only be drank in certain drinkware ? And you know otherwise . You know , oh , my goodness , you know you're doing it wrong .
Speaker 2It's like it turns out a red solo cup is perfectly fine to drink wine If you're enjoying what you're doing , you know , while watching football and having a pizza , whatever it's , you know that's okay . It's about the enjoyment of the product your way , which also means we don't view wine as an asset . It's not a collectible . Our wines are intended to be drunk , and on our website we say that wine should be poured , not
Wine Industry Opportunities and Challenges
Speaker 2stored . You know , I mean it's just finding these pithy little ways to really anchor who we are and what we do , but at the core it's . You know , there's no right or wrong way , it's your way and we're going to help . Do it your way and let's get rid of all the rest .
Speaker 1Yeah , and the ability to like . Nobody can do what you're doing when it comes to like in store or or retail , because they're not able to aggregate that amount of immense consumer data and then put it into like a model like you have , and then have that determine production and what actually gets sent to the customers , and something that part is really valuable in and of itself .
Speaker 2Yeah , no , I , and that is . That is the hook , and I don't know that . I'd say no one is doing it , as with any good idea , you always find some competition and we think that's terrific , but it's still . It's such a tiny little corner of the category , I mean even just online . I mean it's . It's mind-boggling to me as someone who has lived through many Category disruptions and consumers . Things have moved online . How , how microscopic the online side of wine and liquor still is , you know , which is more so in the US than elsewhere just because of our regulatory climate here . But this is a very under-serviced market online and you know I mean that obviously , given everything else that's happened with the enablement of the internet clearly remains enormous opportunity for disruption .
Speaker 1What would have been some of the biggest opportunities you've noticed or Things you've uncovered as you approach ? Think you mentioned one year almost now in the wine industry , right , what are , what are , your biggest takeaways thus far ? What are the biggest areas of opportunity that you're saying ?
Speaker 2Well , some of it is just , it's a very , it's a very immature Industry . You know , just , from a , from a maturation point of view , I mean , they're just there aren't . There aren't Major online players . I mean , as you look at DTC liquor wine companies , I mean there are very , very few , who've even been north of a hundred million dollars . And you know where you look at wine , which is , you know , a 70 to 80 billion dollar category in the US alone . Yeah , that's yeah . That doesn't add up against . Some of it is just it's very difficult with the regulatory side . But what's interesting there is , I mean this is , you know , the company that we work with , that you're connected to with drinks , as you would expect , as more disruption occurs , and and Identifying the , the opportunities Sorry about that , identifying the opportunities that are out there , partners show up and service providers show up that help normalize some of those barriers . And , you know , with drinks , where we're able to Plug and play , manage a lot of attacks and compliance and regulatory issues , it starts to create a more level playing field where you can focus and what you should be focusing , which is creating great consumer Experiences . You know , digitally enabled , but even that , I mean most wineries are just that they're wineries . They they're . Their love and passion is the creation and production and enjoyment of the product and , as a product company , which is what wineries are is all about their product . There's nothing wrong with that . But understanding I mean , a lot of the wineries have over decades honed incredible restaurants or tasting rooms or on-premises experiences but that shift into Understanding you can extend far beyond your own tasting room is something that is you know .
Speaker 2There's a learning curve on that . I mean , if you think of traditional retailers , you know , go back 15 years ago . They were all terrible at online business . They outsourced at all . They didn't know how to do it themselves , they didn't have in-house talent . They captured a lot of business early on just because there was pent up demand , but then it was very difficult for them to grow because it just wasn't a core competency .
Speaker 2I saw that 20 years ago in travel , where I spent a lot of time , was one of the early disruptors I saw . I saw it in retail and I'm starting to see it here in wine , where we're just on the early stages , where this is gonna have to become a core competency and consumers the demand is there . It's just being under service and you know , I mean , the good part now is , and I'd say my biggest learning is you don't have to reinvent the wheel . Yeah , I mean , what ? What makes great consumer and great retail experiences has been figured out and it's just a matter of admitting to yourself and sort of . You know , admission is the first step toward recovery . You know , the category needs to admit to itself that we're missing an opportunity here and , rather than just Treating it as a necessary evil or trying to reinvent the wheel , recognizing that this can be done . It has been figured out and it's just a matter of putting those same principles in place and taking advantage of that opportunity .
Speaker 1Yeah , the craziest thing for me is like why is Is ? I mean , yeah , there's the tax and compliance , but once you're beyond that , why do we not get to use the same tools and technologies that everybody else gets to use and , like consumers Love and enjoy ? And so that's been the most eye-opening thing for me . Walking through less so Right sellers because bright sellers is very much so a digitally native , like D2C brand Beyond what you would expect from like a winery or retailer , but walking through the wineries and retailers , what is actually possible with the internet and how to connect directly with the customers , and Sort of the eyes opening to , oh , my goodness , like I actually can't have all these things . Like not everything has to be so specific to me . Like why is there a Platform that is just a point solution for your specific category ? Long term ?
Speaker 1I don't think the , I don't think it pans out because you don't . You have a very like defined TAM . You can't build out a large engineering team . I mean , like not to make this all about Shopify , but Shopify is like 4,000 engineers . Not a single alcohol specific Software has that when it comes to e-commerce . So the pace of innovation is too much to to be kept up with . And then you got customers who are looking at alternatives and they're like , well , I'm just gonna go order from the brand . Who might not be alcohol , but they've got a great customer experience . Maybe it's no Alk , maybe it's a even like a CBD drink per se . I'm gonna go that route because it's one click to buy and it's not a mail order catalog style like order form .
Speaker 2Yeah , no , that that's right and I'll I'll tell two stories . You know I'm not overbuilding and then the the challenges of Of sort of these off-the-shelf solutions . Yeah , I'm not overbuilding . I mean , our business was launched eight years ago and at that time Shopify was was , you know , more of a one-size-fits-all marketplace type solution that was really optimizing on Main Street USA Just getting the , the small , typical retailer online as effortlessly as possible . But like a subscription solution like ours , with specific regulatory needs , just wasn't gonna work at that time and and really subscription in general was in its infancy . So our founders built our whole platform from scratch and at that time I think that was sort of the arbitrage is he hears , something that could be done that no one's ever done before . Therefore , we can't get it off the shelf and we've got to build it ourselves .
Speaker 1And that's what drinks did with with wine insiders , so it's like everybody did that yeah that's right , because you had no choice .
Speaker 2And , by the way , when I was at Expedia in the early 2000s , they you know that entire platform was built and I mean there was a multi-year , painful but necessary migration to get on to more modern technologies . And that is something that has to happen Over time in in any company , including the largest companies . The challenge is twofold . It's it's not even just finding the time to get rid of the , you know as they call technical debt , but structurally there's sort of a . You can easily end up with strategic Barriers within your own company just because of how your organizationally set up . I mean , in my case I had a very , very talented team of developers . I mean we had a dozen and a half people in our , in our IT organization who had enormous pride for what they built and their entire livelihood was around maintaining and advancing that platform . So how do you ask that team and that leader to say , hey , is there another way ? That , at the end of the day , is kind of like saying , hey , you know , go find a . You know , go find a knife and then , you know , stop all your own jobs in the back with it . You know , it's just , it's kind of an unreasonable ask and in our case , you know , I ultimately had to come to a very painful decision was was the only way forward , was a massive change , and I made the call that we're just gonna no longer have an in house development team at all and we needed to get on standard platforms in the form of shopify . But the painful part of that is I don't think we ever could have succeeded at that if I didn't start by saying I need to own up to the fact that we no longer need this engineering department , because that's what we're gonna be paying Shopify for . The amazing thing is we got live on it fairly quickly with , you know , with partnership , with , with , with drinks and some other players in the shopify network . Yeah , and the total cost literally the total cost to build it out , not not run it just I mean that there's startup costs on these things and that tends to be a barrier as well , but the total cost to build it out was still only a fraction of my total labor costs I was carrying . So even even building it was a cost savings and you know . But it's still required a significant organizational change and a lot of really great people , yeah , are no longer working at this company and they've largely found terrific jobs good people do but are no longer here and that's a tough change to how do you go through that process . But then the flip side is , yeah , the advantage of customers .
Speaker 2You get exactly what you want and like in wine . I'll give a specific example on something that we had struggled with In traditional retail . As you think of order history and we're all quite familiar with this order history is just that it's . It's the history of your orders , which means you look at here's the order I placed three weeks ago and what was in that order and how much I pay for it and was it all shipped . I mean your basic information like that .
Speaker 2With something like wine , I care less about when I bought that bottle wine . What I care more about is what did I buy from you and have I drank it or not ? You know which we call the wine seller , but it's a product centric view of order history , not an order centric view of order history . You know , we want to be able to present here's all the wine you ever bought from us and let's let you play with that and review it and manage it Well sort of the hierarchy of information and shop .
Speaker 2If I doesn't have that concept . It's there's products and there's orders , and products are a child of order and that's how they present the information . So you know , that's where you know those are . The trade off is then how do we use these off the shelf solutions that make it right for a customer and , yeah , that anything's achievable , and we've got that rolling out in a matter of just a couple weeks here . But there's always trade offs and that's part of what has to be balanced is how do I make sure I'm still getting a right for the customer and an efficient and viable way , but also how do you make sure you can still service the specific needs of your business ?
Speaker 1Well , that total cost of ownership is a big one for a lot of the merchants I speak with when they're evaluating making a move to to shop . If I , because you don't have to have the same internal resources that you need to have if you are On the proprietary platform and you've seen some of the largest brands in the world over the past year make a move to shop . If I because They've backed away from like there used to be this over also an engineering company or were technology company as well . It's like no , your product and marketing Business you should not also be staffing like 50 engineers or 100 engineers to keep the platform running . And you still see some like giants , like athletic greens , is still proprietary but they're doing like billions of dollars in sales , but In that I'd say hundred to five hundred million dollar range .
Speaker 1You've seen companies like what's the big skincare brand that just moved back to the Shopify there's ? There's one that's escaping my mind , but it was like it was a big . There's a big thing because for so long they're like we would never do that , like we're custom , we're , we're , we're , we're a technology company as well as a skincare company and those glossy , and now they're back on Shopify plus , and so I think I was gonna say I think the writing is on the wall for for most looking at this and like let's get back to what we actually want to be doing , which is Marketing , building the product , connecting with customers , not worrying about whether or not we're gonna be able to accept payments on our website , because we need to have this massive engineering team to keep supporting it .
Speaker 2No , it's but , but I it's multifaceted .
In-House Expertise in Business Outsourcing
Speaker 2When I was at a purple , we were one of Shopify's larger customers and I made the decision this was back in like 2019 , so about four years ago to get off of Shopify , and at that time it was the right decision . We had scale and complexities in our business that were not aligned with Shopify's strategies and they were pretty upfront about that at that time . Since then , they have decided to invest much more heavily in enterprise scale and have both added many more enterprise features as well as things like Shopify extensions and more robust app store instead of third party players . But even now , their headless offerings that they're starting to lean into opens up the possibility of supporting enterprise and enterprise integrations . So you know some of it is . Shopify has evolved as well , and you would expect to see that over time , which allows larger companies to stay on it or consider even going on it . But the other side , there's a caution I've learned through my career If you're outsourcing something that you have no experience in , it's very difficult to ever have your business be exceptionally good at those things .
Speaker 2You know you'll get the least common denominator support . So if you choose a really good partner who's really good at something , you're going to be as good as they are in general . But if you want to actually be better than your peers , if you want to actually aim for something where you are aiming for something more than you know , we're good enough it requires knowledge and expertise in-house . There's just no escaping it . If you need a 300 person contact center and not a single person in your company knows anything about contact centers , I can say now you will have a competent contact center , but you will never have a great contact center .
Speaker 2If you have someone in your company who has a background in this and understands it , knows it well and knows how to prioritize and drive and partner with that contact center company that's outside your company , you could have something truly amazing , and it's true in anything you outsource , including your e-commerce stack , including your marketing , including your technology , and I think that's the one part . Yes , you don't have to have a 50 or 100 person engineering team , but you still need to have if you're going to treat this as something strategic and important to your business . You still need to have some in-house knowledge and competency , and again , I still think that's something that , in this category , is lost . This is still more of the how do I just buy my way out of it and not recognize . Just like it's not about farming and harvesting and fermenting grapes , it's also about running a restaurant or running a retail tasting room which they pride themselves in being really good at . This should be no different , and there needs to be some level of expertise here .
Speaker 1Yeah , well , as far as like from the agency side , it's significantly easier to work with a client who has somebody in-house that knows what's going on and can be like that point connector to the rest of the business and allow us to also be successful . Because if that person isn't there then it makes things really challenging . Like working with O'Neill . We have their director of Ecom , that's like our go-to and he's the one that sort of steers the ship and we provide all of our expertise that we bring to the table from the variety of clients that we work with and he brings the O'Neill side of things to the table and also what their goals are and what's going to make them unique . But if that wasn't there and we were just doing everything in a vacuum , then it would just be mediocre .
Speaker 2That's right and it's a mistake I see made over and over across many companies . If we're not good at it ourselves , let someone else manage it . And again , I think there's a difference of utilization of labor and overhead and outsourcing things that still need to be strategically important to you , and that's part of the maturing that needs to happen in this category .
Speaker 1Sort of unrelated to alcohol . But what do you think of the last couple of years ? It seems like a lot of the very SMB focused technologies have started to work their way upmarket aggressively and this is just my opinion , but it feels like it's much easier to do that than it is to go the other way and maybe one of these big enterprise companies and try and work your way downmarket because it feels like they're taking a lot of market share .
Speaker 2Yeah , well , I would say what the big enterprise companies do is acquire companies that are really good at SMB to start to capture that market , partly on the debt that some of those SMB companies move upward into enterprise and then they've already got customer lock-in . I mean , that's been going on for many , many years . I think the underlying thing you're tapping into there is each year things that used to be very difficult to do , complicated and expensive , become easier and easier . I mean , when I was at American Eagle Outfitters it would be an eight-figure exercise for us to put like new point of sale in all our stores . It's a complicated , big IT thing . And then companies like Square come along where you can have a POS that's a fraction of the cost and actually more capable than you can get from an enterprise company . So Main Street USA retailer actually has a more consumer-friendly interaction than a major multi-billion-dollar corporation . How does that happen that if I'm a tiny company leveraging SMB-focused startups that I can actually have better , lower-cost experiences ? But that's what you see start to happen where suddenly things I mean I'll give you an example just with bright sellers I move on to Shopify and I get an email that says hey , susan Smith is trying to deposit $80 into your PayPal account
Future Trends in the Wine Industry
Speaker 2.
Speaker 2Click here to set up your account . And of course , my initial reaction was that and a prince from Nigeria . And I deleted the email . It's like whatever this is , I don't know if I'm not even wasting my time on it . I went back later in the day and I thought , huh , maybe that was something I should go back and look , and I undeleted the email and I looked and I inspected and realized now this is actually from PayPal and I clicked through and , sure enough , we'd gone live on Shopify .
Speaker 2We'd never used PayPal before . It just sort of came with the package . But because it's running through a separate payment flow , we still have to wire PayPal up to our bank account so that we can receive deposits . So I got my head counting on , we wired it up and literally 15 minutes later a bunch of money just started flowing into our bank account . Now I compare that literally the same week I'm chatting with a peer of mine who is at a much , much larger company who just spent nearly $200,000 with an integrator to turn PayPal on on his site . So for him it was a massive , expensive project and a complicated integration and for us it was an accidental email that cost us nothing and made us more money . But that's what's happening and what is hard . How does that enterprise company , who makes a lot of money on services and thrives on that complexity , go down market a lot harder ? This is what's great about the entrepreneurial side of this business is more and more of these things become more enabled at scale and that slowly filters its way up .
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean , I checked out on Nikecom last week and it was just painful and I'm like , why is it this way ? But I think that's what's exciting about being on the startup side and being in the entrepreneurship space is that you almost get to be a little bit more innovative because you're not spending your time doing a $200,000 project to put PayPal onto a website , which is just an obvious like yes , this should be here versus what I'm sure that colleague of yours would rather be focused on is like other things , like about growing the business versus trying to deal with an integrator to do the $200,000 PayPal integration . Yeah Well , I got a couple of fun questions for you before we wrap things up here , but before I dive into those two , are there any things that you're really excited about over the next ? I don't know . One year , three years , five years , 10 years , whatever you want to pick . It doesn't even have to be alcohol specific either .
Speaker 2I'll focus on our business . I just I think , with this focus on customer and this newer customer and this younger customer , it unlocks all sorts of interesting things . I mean the focus on packaging and sustainability . I saw a report that showed in France , on a volume basis , more wine is consumed out of boxes than out of bottles , which would seem blasphemous here in the US . But that's again . This is more about culture and precedent than it is about cost or convenience or servicing customers .
Speaker 2So as you think about different packaging , whether it be plastics or a box , you know bag in a box . Or as you think about single serve , you know why is it if I just want a glass of wine , I have to commit to a whole bottle of wine . As I think about even just I mean you brought up , you know RTD . You know we just launched our first RTD product . But it's true to who we are , it's a reinvention of how to think about wine . I mean we found some partners where we were able to have a true Helisco blue agave plant that you make . Any fruit like plant with sugar content can be fermented and turned into wine and you know we can actually make a wine out of the same plant tequila is made out of .
Speaker 2Now , the point isn't is that a good wine to drink ? The point is that wine can be used in other mixes and we've got a phenomenal margarita . I mean it's just , it's really good . That is actually a wine based product , which also opens up all sorts of legal distribution opportunities in the US , as wine is treated differently than other alcohols . But it's a great product . It tastes phenomenal . It's about half the ABV of a typically high quality margarita and you know it is a healthy product .
Speaker 2So , whether it's new products , new formulations , new packaging , even the low alcohol , zero proof , those kinds of things you know is a way to get into this space , and our point of view is we think the winners are going to be ones that follow the customer . You know where , where's the demand and how are you servicing them , which is , instead of trying to get customers to operate on your terms , how do you operate on your customers terms ? And I just I think there's going to be a lot of transformation and consolidation in this industry as we get back to servicing the customer and not to servicing those on the high end with means . So that's exciting .
Speaker 1The servicing your customer . When I was talking to R&DC , they distribute Happy Dad , which is the product that the the milk boys started , and like that's the perfect example of just servicing your customer . And then that came out of that and then I got introduced to the product . Not even through that , it was just like it was . It's like nationally distributed now , but that type of like listening to your customer and then having the authenticity is is something that's becoming more and more important as consumers sort of see through the BS .
Speaker 2Yeah and but . But you're hitting on . There's the lifestyle brand side of this , which you know . There's . There's all sorts of fun things happening and wine has always been a bit of a fashion category where lifestyle brands matter . Where I think it's interesting is where the product itself truly starts to transform . You know what ? What is a wine ? How is it sold ? How is the customer purchase ? How is the package ? You know how is it consumed ? I mean , it's not even just the brand around the wine and servicing different markets or minorities or other under service players in in this , in this category , it's , it's rethinking what's the product itself .
Speaker 1Yeah , there's . When we were at Pro Wine this year , there were some crazy different like packaging options and like just very unique serving sizes , and for me , the smaller , because the unit economics are not great when you have the single serves and stuff like that . So how does that work long term ? Like we just launched a company called called sample on the drinks app and they're doing these little tubes basically of about 12 or 15 different wines and I'm just not sure , like Is are you able to make that work ? Because from a customer standpoint maybe it is better , but like Does it work financially for the business to be able to do so ?
Speaker 2But that again that's operating from within the existing industry Processes . I mean the , the juice , the wine itself is a relatively small piece of the overall cost of of the product you're selling . I mean heavy Glass that takes a lot of energy to manufacturers , typically shipped overseas from China . You know , with a , a production process optimized to 750 milliliter bottles and more , you know doing a test tube size bottle , most of the costs don't go down at all . The only part of that that really goes down in price is the juice itself , which is again often the least expensive part of the overall product .
Speaker 2But again that's trying to force fit a Different solution into an existing infrastructure . And again , as you're talking out five years , I mean you brought up beauty . I mean there there are many categories that have a lot of liquid or soft good type products in a Variety of sizes and shapes that don't suffer from the same unit economic problems . But they've actually adapted the industry around the consumer need instead of trying to force fit these things into existing production processes . And again I think that's scale is going to matter here . I mean this is where it's hard to be a startup , because you know investing in the capital to these things is hard , but if the consumer demand is there , the industry will get there , as long as we have players who genuinely follow the customer .
Speaker 1Yeah , that all makes sense . Well , the fun questions , what's ? Your favorite wine memory .
Speaker 2My favorite wine memory . Clearly , I have not been prepped on these to think about ahead of time .
Speaker 1That's the point .
Speaker 2Yeah . So , uh , can you want the ? Can I do a long form answer ? It's not that long , sure ? Yeah , when I was , uh , my dad borrowed a joke that he had seen and used at home when I was young .
Speaker 2My dad I was probably eight or nine came home a little frustrated and and Took his wine glass because wine was always a dinner and said children , I have a brother , children , it's time for you to learn how to properly drink wine . And he , he held up his wine glass and he pointed to the far side of the glass and he said never drink from this side of the Glass , only this side . And we had lots of questions about well , how do you know which side it is ? No , no , no , no , no , just never drink from this . And we went on and on I'm giving you the somewhat shorter version of this and he finally held up the glass , he stuck his chin in the glass and put his mouth on the far side of the glass and tried to drink , and the entire glass of wine poured down his chest and onto his shirt and stained everything and put it down and said , as I said , never drink from that side of the Glass .
Speaker 2And went back to eating his dinner and my brother and I were hysterically laughing , fell and uh , but there's . You know well , that's a fun dad moment and a classic dad joke . It's back to . You know , the wine was just part of the family , it was part of joy , it was something to be experienced and you know , at a very young age , you know that's , that's what it's supposed to be about . Um , not how dare you spill a drop of wine ? And uh , and the correct way to drink wine . You know it's about manners and etiquette . So I just that will always be with me .
Speaker 1I think that's what's so cool about wine , is it's more about the people and the experience than sometimes even the wine itself . So that's absolutely . Last question if you could share a bottle of anyone , what would it be , and then who would you be drinking it with ?
Speaker 2Oh , that's a . So I'm gonna , I'm gonna dodge that question . I'm gonna dodge part of it . I'm I'm uh , true to bright sellers . I'm in an exploratory phase right now , like what I've discovered is how many kinds of wine and uh , and the breadth of wine that I never knew about . And uh , I'm a movie buff too , and I dodged the question what's my favorite movie ? It's like , pick a category . I have many favorite movies .
Speaker 2Um , like , I'd never heard of what a toral de go is . I , I , if you had said that , I would have thought if that's something you know that the doctors do , I , I'd never heard of what a toral de go was and I tried one and I was like this is fantastic . I , I really love this wine and uh , so right now , it's , uh , it's an old world grape , um , that Apparently nearly went extinct . Um , it apparently has been harvested here domestically , mostly in Lodi . Um , and uh , I should be more of an expert on this than I , than I clearly am , but at the end of the day , what I cared about is I know what it's for all to go taste like now , and I really like that taste , and you know that that , to me , is is more of what this is about .
Speaker 2So I'm I'm in my exploratory phase where what is most exciting to me would be trying something I've never tried before with a good friend and having the experience and the adventure of that than just having my go to Um . At which point I kind of feel like , okay , now I'm done , um . So I I say I say it's the wrong question . My friend , it's the wrong question , but but who it would be with um ? I , ideally my family . I mean , you know who , who better to share with than your family ?
Speaker 1Hmm , I think that's actually the same response that everybody has given thus far to that question . Um , whether it's wife or family , that's been the predominant response amongst everybody who I've asked that , so I think again , it's another really cool aspect about wine Absolutely absolutely Well .
Speaker 2Thank you so much for joining us ?
Speaker 1Uh , before we hop off , though , can you just let everybody who's listening know where they can find you , or or bright sellers online .
Speaker 2Sure , uh well , bright sellers . There's this thing called the internets . Um , I hear it's a fad , but we're we're betting on it and find your favorite search engine and search for bright sellers . Or , if you're so bold , you could type bright sellerscom . That's c l l a r s dot com , and uh , I , uh , I'm in all the usual channels . You can find me on on linkedin , on twitter , um , just megabo . Uh , yeah , linkedin , I'm megabo . Um , so find me in all the usual channels and I'm I'm always happy to chat with anyone , awesome . Well , thank you so much for coming on for everybody listening .
Speaker 1As always , this is Brandon Amoroso . You can find me at , uh , at drinkscom or on your favorite search engine . Actually , type in drinkscom , because if you type in drinks , you're going to find who knows what . Um but Um , thanks everybody for listening and , uh , we'll see you next time .